THE FORGETFULNESS OF THE FUTURE.
WE discussed last week some of the phenomena of Forget- fulness, but the writer designedly omitted the best known and in some respects perhaps the most puzzling of them all,—the strange incapacity which some men, perhaps a majority of culti- vated men, have for remembering engagements which it annoys them to forget. There are very few indeed among our readers above forty who do not occasionally forget things to be done which they acutely desire to remember—for example, a business engagement, or dinner invitation, or a letter which ought to be -written—and a good many with whom such forgetfulness is so habitual that they take precautions of one kind or another against its occurrence. They charge their wives to remember for them, or keep little memorandum-books--the tablets specially adapted to this incapacity are an article of trade—or they remind them- selves by some -visible sign, like a knot in a handkerchief or an unfastened button, that they have some definite thing to do. So general indeed is this form of "forgetfulness," and so habitually is it recognised in popular speech, that many will wonder at our attributing any interest to it, but it really is often a very perplexing 'manifestation of incapacity, much more perplexing than forget- fulness of names, which are arbitrary sounds, comparatively seldom heard, or forgetfulness of faces, which those who forget them probably never really saw. It is very easy to say that the mind is burdened, or that there is a defect of attention, or that age is creeping on and memory failing, but those explanations by no means fit in with- all the well-known facts of the case. A great many people of very good memories are very forgetful, indeed, so many, that if Macaulay had habitually forgotten his dinner engagements, or his promises to his little nieces, no one would have read the statement with any idea that it disposed of all allegations about his marvellous memory. Let us take two or three instances, which we know to be accurate, and which every- body will recognise as illustratively true. An amateur actor, in his full vigour, is accustomed, on good groends, to trust his mechanical memory to an unusual extent. He has constantly, for example, to learn up a new and longish "part," that is, a long series of• sentences in prose, in which accuracy is of import- ance, because the author's hold on the audience consists, in great part, of a certain cleverness of verbal expression ; and he does it with much ease, and does it in almost all cases for his first appearance in that part. He has the prompter to help him, no doubt, and his "ones," but still he does it pretty thoroughly, remembering many hundred sentences in right order and at the right time. The same man absolutely cannot remember the addresses of his friends, the numbers of their houses par- ticularly, and is compelled to record them in a book, lest he should let them slip. There is no want of memory, usually so called, here, and no deficiency of attention, for the num- bers are recalled for a certain time, and then disappear as if the memory had been rubbed with a sponge. Another man is a clergyman, devoted to criticism, who is compelled to remember long and philosophical arguments, who scarcely ever forgets poetry, and who has the command almost at will of almost every text in the New Testament, yet he has the milt painful difficulty in remembering a social engagement. No determination totre- member, no sense of the cruel annoyance he may inflict, noaare- fur repetition of the fact that he must dine or call at such a house on such a day gives him the slightest security against total forgetfulness of the whole business, a forgetfulness all the more exasperating, because accompanied all the while by an uneasy sense that something of importance or interest has been forgotten. Here the whole power of the memory and the whole strength of the will appear to be exerted by a man of strong memory to re- member a fact of interest entirely without effect. A third man is a politician, engrossed in political interests, remembering within that circle of thought . entire series of complicated facts, long narratives in books, and the drift of innumerable newspaper articles, besides possessing a special memory for the details of foreign budgets, yet he cannot remember things he wants to do from hour to hour ; forgets letters he ought to write, moneys he ought to pay, the most frequent engagements of civilised life. No exertion will enable him to recollect two or three purchases which he has set out from his house withal distinct purpose of making before his return. "I have tried," he tells us, "by the most intense and painful volition, to remember that I must call at three or four shops, or write a letter before noon, or send for my little child who is always present in my thoughts, and I cannot do it, and am compelled to keep tablets, yet my memory for all things communicable on paper is positively luminous, and I doubt if I ever forgot a story I had heard." Here there is full power of memory, distinct will to remember, and painful attention, and yet an incapacity of memory with regard to certain things which ought to be re- membered. One-half at least of our readers will avow that upon certain points they are troubled in the same way, with a trouble which some of them will add rises to a most serious inconvenience. We have known twice and heard often of the in- capacity rising to a height which disqualified the sufferers other- wise full of intelligence and knowledge, for the ordinary business of life, and drove them into a seclusion they did not desire. There might of course in such cases be mental lesion, and we do not desire to import such cases into the argument, but still they are only exaggerations of a very common defect,—common, at least, among men. It is much less common, though it exists, among women, owing to that disposition to consider details im- portant which is forced upon them by the circumstances of their lives.
Now, what is the cause of a weakness so general, yet so far from universal, and—we put in this remark with a faint degree of uncertainty, but with a prevailing conviction that it is true— so much more common among the cultivated than the ignorant? We believe the cause, though at first sight obscure, can be ascer- tained; and if so, the evil can be partially cured, and a good many of our readers will have an amusing opportunity of per- forming mental aperiments on themselves. It will be observed that the deficiency we have so imperfectly described, but which needs so little description, is usually not, properly speaking, a defect of the true memory at all, but only a defect of what we might call, if we wanted a phrase, "the paulo-post-futurnm memory." You have not forgotten an act or a circumstance, or a thing seen, or written, or said, but only an operation of your own mind, an internal thought, or resolve, or wish, not reduced to writing or action in any way, something in fact completely non-material. The mental action may have been caused, and usually is caused, by something material. The wish to write or to keep an engagement is usually caused by the receipt of a letter, or message, or utterance from a friend, but the
wish itself is born of your own mind, is an operation within it unassisted by the external senses, which usually act upon the memory. There is, as we suspect, in many minds, and especially in minds much occupied, and most especially in minds at once much occupied and very quick, an occasional diffi- culty in recollecting their own operations,—operations very much jostled and, as it were, blurred or overlaid by other operations going on, consciously or unconsciously, at the same time. The memory does not in all men receive the impact of a mental decision as strongly or as clearly as it does an impact from external events, or circumstances which have been visible to the senses as well as the interior eye. Very many people forget a pain, in fact, the majority forget, happily, the details, or as it were, methods of pain, but very few forget a temporary disfigurement. You remember a tumour in the face, though long since passed away, much more perfectly than the very acute pain of mumps or ear- ache. A man resolves to call at three shops during his walk, and aware of his forgetfulness, resolves energetically that he will call; but all the while his mind, which alone makes an impact on the memory, the senses being unaffected, is also discussing the reasons why he will call, the distance, the weather, the causes which have led up to the determination, other things, in fact, than the resolve itself. The resolve is not single and by itself, You promise yourself to dine with A. B., but while you promise, the mind, your sole help, is thinking about A. B. in fifty relations other than your dinner. You wish to recollect that A. B., as he has just told you, lives at No. 12, but you are really reflecting on A. B, and your own reasons for wishing to recollect, and not on the number of his house. The defect is not in memory, but in a particu- lar power of isolating a certain impression the mind wishes to make on the memory. That this is the probable explanation seems to us strongly indicated by the efficiency of the apparently whimsical remedy so many people apply to this very defect. They tie knots in their handkerchiefs, or leave buttons unfastened in their waist- coats, or pass morsels of paper under their rings or over their sleeve-buttons, and find and acknowledge that they can "recol- lect." Why ? Because they have called in the aid of exter- nal associations rarely forgotten, and because, in the act of making the mechanical arrangement, they have dissipated the crowd of thoughts which intercept or confuse the single impression they want to make on the memory. One-third at least of the people who use tablets use them as they do the knots in their pocket-handkerchiefs, and recollect the thing they have forgotten not when they read the memorandum, but when they take out the tablets upon which it is inscribed. The act calls up the thought which the act had permitted the mind to in- scribe upon the memory. If this is true, it follows that almost any device which momentarily concentrated the mind's action would prevent this kind of forgetfulness, and no experiment is more easy to try. Merely be sure that when you think of any- thing that "you are sure to forget," or rather not to remember, your mind is clear of a multitude of other thoughts, a process which may be effected by the will once directed to it, or even by a kind of mnemonics. "I am sure I shall forget that dinner." "Well, remember it is dinner number Ten." 4 1 shall forget that fellow's number." "Well, it is 17x." In attaching a number to the engagement, or an impossible letter to the number of a house, the mind, stimulated by the unusualness of the effort, has ceased to wander or be occupied, and neither engagement nor number will be forgotten. You forget that your friend lives at twenty- two, but if he lived at 1111 you would not forget it, for the mind, startled into concentration by an unusualness, would make an adequately deep impression upon the memory.
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